isis-k woke up and found herself in Paris. She had answered a distress signal sent out by a drug-addicted three-legged accordionist, and while she suspected he was a lost soul, she could not help but answer the call.
It was months since her last adventure, which had found her battling the Evil Empress just off the Bermuda Triangle where Barry Manilow's nose was continuing to prove hazardous to ships that passed in the night (unless any of the crew were named Mandy, in which case it sent them away).
Strange sounds heard in the Bermuda Triangle
Her worse fears about the Evil Empress's global ambitions had been confirmed when the BBC's former headquarters at Television Centre had been swallowed up by a movable portal and reappeared on a small island off Miami. However, she could only fight so many battles and had opted to leave Janka the One-eyed Wonder (Queen of the Bulgarian witches) in command of a legion of Romans borrowed from Claudius, a few flying monkeys (defectors from a Disney sequel) and the Weird Sisters, who were on their Easter holidays and were on the verge of trading in their broomsticks for provisional driving licences. We will come back to them later.
For old time's sake, isis-k wandered into the nearest Absinthe bar to look up her old friend Toulouse Lautrec, who was still trying to catch the Green Fairy (a very old friend of the Weird Sister's from Elementary Elf-school back in the 60s.....(1660s), for they were still relatively young and hence somewhat unpredictable)). She asked Henri about the
accordionist and he sighed:
'Best leave him be, isis, he will snap out of it in another few hundred years. If you are looking for a good cause, go see my friend Dartagnion who is putting together an expedition to catch the Jabberwocky, who is running rampage in the 11th arrondissement, ravishing virgins and roasting unsuspecting urchins. Dartagnion needs some help rounding up the gargoyles, who have been on strike since the Eighteenth Century because they are fed up with having their differentials eroded'.
isis-k didn't need to be asked twice. She picked up her bag, mounted her broomstick and headed straight for Dartagnion's house...
The three-legged accordionist fell off his stool outside the Paris brothel where he had been entertaining passersby for three hundred years. He was drunk. Lush from life and under the influence, lid-heavy humming ditties to the pimps of Pigalle and the ladies of love-for-a-sous.
He had promised her he'd wait for ever, and never lost hope as she came and she went with the same refrain: just one more, and then we can leave this place and sever our street servitude. But there was always another lover to please for pennies, as lost in her despair she was dragged by dejection found in fires too old. Too solid the chains, too weak her desire, too deep the furrows too furious the fire. They'd fallen before - too long ago and were bystanders in their own story, set in cement of shared sorrow.
Move along, Freak snarled the gendarme with kicking malevolence, taunting as he'd done for hundreds of years, envying his boundless devotion to a love so lost it seemed laughable:
'three-legged and legless' he sung and the crowd joined in chorus mocking and proud. Proud of what? Proud of thin straight white lines they eschewed? Proud of the queue for La Porte Etroite which stays shut in their faces as they strut the obedience with expressionless faces. There but for the grace of the graces. How could they share what he felt? The devotion of Penelope, weaving by day and unpicking by night, the thread that tied him to one pair of eyes and one sorry soul.
Alons-y Allonso the crowd chanted with glee like the Doctor, D. Tennant the Tennent's super-monster from the park-bench of bed-ridden Britain, the Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I drink to you all.
Move on
Allons-y
Nothing to see - c'est fini
It's just a childlike fantasy
So one battle draws to a close and peace very nearly breaks out...except that here in the Barracks, a truce is never final. It seems that the new CO of the mobile catering corps has torn up the rule-book and inserted his own, in a desperate attempt to make his mark on the battlefield. Thus, when I arrived to check up on my book battalion, I found that Colonel Chez Gerald had dug a trench outside my luxury office suite (aka the broom cupboard, soon to be converted into a disabled loo) and filled it with soggy meringues. Not to be beaten (unlike the egg-whites obviously), I immediately armed myself with several packets of blancmange and built a bridge over the trench to allow both ingress and egress, grabbed a newish edition of Jane's Fighting Ships (second hand on ebay at a very reasonable price) and rounded up the Naval Reserves who were straining at the leash and ready for action.
Seeing himself outsmarted, Chez Gerald decided to pull a fast one and sneakily flogged off some of my very special new editions at a knock-down price the minute my back was turned. This of course kept the punters happy, but left my Brave Boys feeling somewhat depleted. Several in fact are laid up in the Military Hospital complete with bandages and I am reduced to rattling tins in Piccadilly Circus to collect enough money for medical supplies.
Meanwhile in the Indies, Old Colonel Gin-soaked of the Eponymous Gordon's (Highland) Regiment, is stirring up a one-man Indian Mutiny on account of his not having been able to get access to the latest edition of Wisden's Cricket Almanac...well that and the fact that Ocado have failed to deliver his weekly supply of Slimline Tonic. The poor old sod is bereft I tell you: wailing and gnashing teeth - I had to call in the paramedics and get an intravenous infusion of Absinthe set up before he calmed down.
So all business as usual really: don't shoot until you see the eggwhites......
